


puzzle pieces

by dreamrecurrentdreams



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (there's a tag for this what a wild time), Accidental Incest, Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-03-07 07:24:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18868510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamrecurrentdreams/pseuds/dreamrecurrentdreams
Summary: John Baxter the Fifth, known by everyone in his carefully curated social circles as Five, dreamt sometimes of a life where he had neither been born a Baxter nor become a lawyer in his adulthood.He was still Five in these dreams, but knew himself only as Five, took pride in how he ripped through space and time to make a name for himself. He knew too there were six others, but he could never properly make out their faces, only fleeting impressions: black umbrellas inked onto wrists, unblinking eyes behind domino masks, the melancholy notes of a single violin in the distance.





	1. the hermit and the hanged man

**Author's Note:**

> shout out to all the folks who have written tua reincarnation fics and/or for the five/ben pairing, i'm grateful for the chance to contribute one (1) more work to both categories :^)

John Baxter the Fifth, known by everyone in his carefully curated social circles as Five, dreamt sometimes of a life where he had neither been born a Baxter nor become a lawyer in his adulthood. 

He was still Five in these dreams, but knew himself only as Five, took pride in how he ripped through space and time to make a name for himself. He knew too there were six others, but he could never properly make out their faces, only fleeting impressions: black umbrellas inked onto wrists, unblinking eyes behind domino masks, the melancholy notes of a single violin in the distance. 

Five should’ve dismissed the dreams as figments of his imagination but they’d felt far too vivid to him to be set aside as mere fantasy. Granted, he’d been called delusional before for taking on impossible cases no one else dared to touch, but he’d known without a doubt in these circumstances that his confidence was grounded in the concrete evidence of his competence. These dreams, then, were a completely different matter.

The fact that they were enough to call into question his grasp of reality was ridiculous, quite frankly. Aggravating even, because Five had woken up every time in a cold sweat, consumed by the irrational desire to assure himself of the life he’d lived up until now. 

So he’d fallen into the routine of methodically listing the details of his life. 

His name was John Baxter V. He had from a young age insisted that he was to be called Five to set him apart from the generations of Baxter men before him. 

He was a corporate lawyer, a prodigy who had risen to fame by the age of twenty five at his firm. The obstinate bastard that he was, he had chosen not to follow the footsteps of his father and his father before him by becoming a doctor but rather forge his own path by earning admittance into law school and passing the bar exam with flying colors, much to the chagrin of his entire family. 

He was 5’4” but had enough ego and talent to compensate for his stature. He liked peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches and fruity martinis but refused to admit this to anyone, save his colleague Marci who enjoyed black coffee, judging incompetent people, and watching _Gossip Girl_ as much as he did. 

He had been dating the owner of a bookstore, Ben, for two months now. 

He was not alone in experiencing these dreams. 

___________________

He had first met Ben on a rainy day, one where the combination of his car breaking down and his negligence in remembering to bring an umbrella with him that day left him drenched after only a few minutes after attempting to walk home from work. 

He’d had no choice but to duck into the nearest building for shelter, catching only a glimpse of the black printed letters THE GATE OF TRUTH on the storefront before tugging open the door and tumbling inside.

He dropped his guard momentarily to soak in the warmth of the space before taking in the crammed shelves of books lining the walls, the lovingly worn oaken floors that he happened to be dripping all over, and then at last, the storekeeper in front of him.

Five’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of the other man. He met the storekeeper’s dark eyes and it had inexplicably felt like coming home after being away for far too many years, a feeling so strong that he’d fought for a moment to stifle the wave of grief and longing rising in his chest. 

“The weatherman said it’d be raining cats and dogs today; I didn’t realize he meant it’d be raining men too,” the storekeeper remarked dryly, and for once, Five had to pull himself together, gathering his wits in time to respond with a glib, “Got room for a stray?” 

He could see the storekeeper suppressing a smile at that. “I suppose one can’t hurt. Come on in.” He extended a hand. “Hi, I’m Ben. I own this bookstore. You’re welcome to stay for as long as you’d like, until closing hours.”

Five shook it. “John. You call me Five. Thanks for letting me stay.”  

“Five,” Ben repeated, his mouth curling in amusement.  “The fifth in your family?” 

“Had to make a name for myself somehow,” Five replied. He stripped off his suit jacket, draping it over one arm and leaving one hand free to loosen the knot in his tie. 

Ben hummed. “It suits you. You don’t seem like you’d be easy to forget.”

Before Five could ask, he felt something brushing against his ankles. When he looked down, he found a purring orange cat rubbing against his legs. Absentmindedly, he leaned down to scratch its ears. 

“See? Goose rarely ever takes to people. He usually curls up by the window and ignores everyone who comes in. So you must be special.” Ben’s eyes crinkled. In his time as a lawyer, Five had seen plenty of people smile, the way sharks smiled and crocodiles cried. Few ever smiled the way Ben did, warm and sincere and open. 

Ben was pretty when he smiled. 

“That’s an interesting name,” Five said, mainly to slam hard on the brakes of his current train of thought, as he watched Goose pad away towards the back of the store. “What’s the story behind it?”

Ben flushed slightly at that, one hand creeping up to rub his neck sheepishly. “It’s a little lame but I named him after the cat in the Captain Marvel comics. It’s an orange cat too, one revealed to be an alien that can sprout tentacles and pass between dimensions, and I thought it’d be funny to name my cat to pay homage to the character. ”

“It’s not lame,” Five said briskly. “Society’s been drawn to the Marvel franchise for a number of reasons, it’s understandable that you would feel the same way. What appeals to you about the superhero genre?” 

Ben was silent for a moment. “I think I’m into the idea that characters in the comics can decide the outcome of their lives in spite of or in light of the circumstances they were born into,” he said finally, and looked at Five carefully. “That things don’t have to be this way, you know?”

“I do,” Five said quietly, and the image of dragging his body through a barren wasteland, ragged fingernails digging into his palms and pressing the mantra _it doesn’t have to end like this_ against his gritted teeth, flashed through his mind.  

They had smiled at each other. 

And from that point onwards, Five had decided to walk to work each day so he could walk by Ben’s bookstore on the way back, even after his car had been fully repaired. He’d told Marci loftily that he’d done it out of concern for the environment and she hadn’t bought his bullshit for a second. “Who’s the lucky girl or guy?”

“None of your business, that’s who,” he sniped back, flipping through his latest case file while replaying the last conversation he’d had with Ben.

It had started with Five accompanying Ben in taking inventory of the store, stopping to pet Goose by the window and thumbing through a worn copy of _Cloud Atlas_ that had been left on the windowsill. Ben had glanced at the book in Five’s hands and asked if Five believed in reincarnation.  

Five had tucked _Cloud Atlas_ back into its place on a nearby shelf and without looking at Ben, said in the same tone one might use when talking about the weather, “I have my suspicions I’ve been dreaming of a past life.” 

Ben, bless him, had not only taken it in stride but responded, “Right, I know what you mean. Like when you experience a dream sequence and it feels like fragments of memories you never knew you had.” He’d turned to Five then, and said he’d wondered if the two of them had met in a past life before. “Not to be  cliché or anything --” 

“No, it makes sense,” Five had replied, and thought of how the two of them had come to fit in each other’s lives, slotting neatly into place like complementary puzzle pieces. “I’ve felt at home around you in ways I’ve never felt with anyone else.”   

Ben had smiled then, and this time when Five thought to himself that Ben was pretty when he smiled, he allowed the thought to stay. 

It took two weeks to ask Ben out for dinner, where he ordered coffee and Ben ordered waffles and the two of them spent the night talking, their legs brushing against each other. 

It took a month ago to walk Ben home after closing the bookstore, to stand up on his tiptoes and press his mouth against Ben’s, and feel Ben’s smile unfurl against his in turn. 

And it took until now for Ben to invite him to stay the night, Ben’s hands cradling his face and his hands curling into Ben’s jacket as the two of them kissed in the doorway. 

He’d been to Ben’s apartment before, a space simultaneously haphazard in the amount of books flowing out of every nook and cranny in the living room and organized in the meticulous arrangement of the kitchen and the upkeep of the potted plants along the windowsills, but this time, as the two of them reached for each other in the darkness, Ben steered them towards the bedroom. It took some time - with Five sliding his hands under Ben’s shirt and Ben kissing Five’s jaw - but they made it eventually, Five landing on the bed, surrounded by Ben’s frame.

In all the times Five had been with other people, none of his partners had treated him gently. It had been fine; he could take it, had built his entire life on standing his ground, refusing to yield, meeting the future head on. But Ben was careful with him, pressing the reverent slow heat of his mouth to Five’s temple, collarbone, shoulders. Five closed his eyes, let his fingers trail against the smooth expanse of Ben’s back, fingernails scraping against Ben’s neck as their mouths met, their bodies sliding against each other. 

He would unravel under Ben’s touch. And in the aftermath, lying together in the same bed, Five would raise one hand to brush against Ben’s cheek, watch for the curve of Ben’s lashes, and Ben would in turn press his mouth against Five’s wrist. 

They would fall asleep like this, bodies curled around each other, and Five would dream once more.

_____________________

_“It doesn’t have to end like this,” Five breathed out, trembling. He had fought far too hard, survived for far too long, to have made his way back to his family, only for them to all meet their end like this._

_In the end, searching each and every one of their gazes, he’d resolved to set in action the plan to travel through time and take them all with him. He couldn’t, wouldn’t leave any of them behind. Not even Vanya, cradled limply in Luther’s arms. Not even Ben, the flickering silhouette behind Klaus._

_Under the light of the disintegrating moon, their chests rising and falling narrowly, they linked hands. Five gripped Diego’s calloused palm, intertwined with Allison’s smooth fingers, then closed his eyes, reaching for the fabric of the space-time continuum, and pulled as hard as he could. It yielded painstakingly slowly, but bent nonetheless to his will, fraying under all the pressure he exerted until a hole opened at last, crackling with electricity._

_As the portal widened, as Five’s eyes swept over his family, he saw six young faces peering back at him with wonder and fear. He met Ben’s eyes last, dark and determined, and then they had blinked out of existence, erased from the world as they had known it, brought into_

________________________

Five jerked awake. Like every other time he’d had this kind of dream, he had woken up in a cold sweat. But this time, he felt no need to remember the details of this life, not when he knew, with an unwavering certainty that: 

His name was Five, Number Five in the Hargreeves family.

He was a time-traveler. He had spent the first thirteen years of his life with his family, had leapt forward in time into the future in an attempt to play God and paid the price of spending forty-five years in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, made his way back to 2019 to prevent said apocalypse only to wind up facing the end of the world as he knew it.

But he had not been alone. There had been six others, and he refused to let them experience the end, not like this, and he must have brought them to this world along with him.

A world that had not seen the apocalypse. A world that they had entered, become reborn into people free of their lives as the Umbrella Academy. 

In this world, he was still 5’4” with enough ego and talent to compensate for his stature. He liked peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches and fruity martinis but had forgotten it was Vanya, who made the former while she waited for his return, and Delores, his companion in the post-apocalypse who had become his drinking partner in regards to the latter. 

He had forgotten too Luther and Allison and Diego and Klaus.

And Ben. 

Five sat up, looked to his left, found Ben already upright, leaning against the headboard, a cigarette dangling from his fingers. Illuminated by the sunlight streaming in through the window, Ben was beautiful.

Ben the used bookstore owner, Ben his lover. 

Ben his brother. 

“Ben,” Five said,  and Ben turned to him, dark eyes meeting his.  

What Five wanted to ask was, “Did you dream it too?” But it wasn’t a dream, had never been one. So he looked at Ben and asked, “Do you remember now?”

Radiant in the glow of the morning, Ben exhaled, smoke spilling out of his lips. 

“I do,” he said quietly.


	2. the hanged man and the fool

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> glad that it's summer at last! and grateful for the chance to write more.  
> thank you for reading in the meantime

As Ben turned away to reach for an ashtray to stub out his cigarette, Five caught a glimpse of his expression, his mouth a thin tight line and his brow pinched.

Five supposed he should have been glad. That after forty five years and change, he could still recognize the familiar tautness that Ben always carried himself with, even back when they were all teenagers. That after countless leaps through time, he’d made contact with Ben again, found one of the only six people that could anchor him to this world.

But even as he and Ben sat a few inches apart from each other the same bed, a rift had materialized between them sometime in the early hours of the morning with the dawning realization that they’d forgotten along who they were meant to be; that the lives they had led thus far had been nothing but a delusion.

Five suppressed a bitter smile at the thought that they were like Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve, who upon realizing their own nakedness, became ashamed and in agony of their newfound awareness of themselves and the world they lived in.

And always, Five had taken issue with the idea that knowledge could bring about a person’s downfall; in traveling through space and time, the truth had been the one guiding light he’d pursued, to retrace the steps that led to the apocalypse and find his way back home.

But he’d also been satisfied to live in this world while he didn’t know who he was, secure in his ways of living. Content to have spent so many evenings in the bookstore of the man he’d wanted to share the mornings after with. Happy, even, if he could admit that he was capable of experiencing such a frivolous feeling.

And he’d be lying if he said otherwise.

“You know,” Ben said suddenly. “I was happy to have not remembered.” Five looked at him and Ben met his gaze unflinchingly. “I liked being with you. I wanted to wake up in the morning and know that we could still have this.” He shook his head and let out a mirthless laugh. “It’s unreal. Because when I did wake up, I remembered that I used to host tentacle monsters inside my body and that I died because they ripped me to pieces. Then I had to live as a ghost for the next fourteen years and it only took the apocalypse to reunite with my family and hope that things would get better the next time around. And my next shot at life, at being happy? Turns out that the guy I’m in love with is my brother and it only took one night together to piece it all together.” Ben took a shuddering breath. “That’s. That’s fucked up.”

“I should leave,” Five said.

He kept his expression neutral, his words measured. He alone needed to take responsibility in dealing with the fallout of transporting everyone out of their timeline. And if taking responsibility meant removing himself from the picture as the source of the problem, he’d do it. He’d do whatever it took.

But before he could move, Ben grabbed his wrist. “Don’t go.” Then: “Five, look at me. Please.”

Five locked eyes with him.

“It’s not you,” Ben said quietly and squeezed Five’s wrist gently before letting go. “I promise. This is just a lot to take in. Knowing that I was as happy as I was in a life that was never real to begin with, just because I didn’t remember anything. But it’s important that I remembered. I never would’ve forgiven myself if I had forgotten who I was or any of you.”

“I found out that you’d died after reading Vanya’s book.” The words had slipped out before Five realized. But he couldn’t stop, now that he had Ben’s full attention. Then and now, Ben had always listened to him closely, given him the space he needed to pull the constellations of his thoughts together, kept up with every connection he made and every conclusion he drew.

“When I first arrived in the future, I thought the apocalypse had killed everyone including you but I couldn’t find your body, no matter how much I looked.” Because Ben had died a decade before the rest of them. Because Ben had died only one year after he vanished into the future.

When he’d first learned about Ben, his mind couldn’t stop conjuring images of Ben’s last moments. Ben, frame still small and slender at sixteen years old, curled up in a pool of his blood, trembling hands pressed to the seething gash in his abdomen. Ben, tears spilling from his eyes like the darkness spilling out of him, sobs tumbling from his lips like the eldritch beings tumbling from his gaping wounds. Ben, finally falling still, just a body, a husk of what it once was.

Five’s chest constricted. “I’m sorry,” he said now. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

“You’re here with me now,” Ben said, and smiled a sad, knowing smile. But this time, his eyes were clear and his voice was steady. “You saved us all in the end and I did get a second chance. A chance I intend to make the most of, with the people who I care about the most. So don’t go.”

“I won’t,” Five replied. He breathed in, then out. “I promise I won’t.”

“Good. Then things are settled.” With that, Ben slid out of bed. “I’m going to go make breakfast and we can talk about things more in depth afterwards. You’re welcome to shower here and borrow a change of clothes.” His lips quirked up wryly. “My home is your home, after all.”

_______________________

At the Umbrella Academy, when the seven of them had all lived together as a family, they’d shared everything. The same brand of cereal, toothpaste, laundry detergent. Even the same clothing; having the same uniform meant an inevitable mix-up of loads of laundry and that far too many times Five would slip on a blazer only to discover the shoulders were too broad or too narrow.

It made absolutely no sense then for Five to be reacting this strongly to using the same soap as Ben or borrowing Ben’s clothes.

But here he was, tugging on the collar of one of Ben’s old shirts to inhale the comforting scent of old books and ground coffee, rubbing the soft worn fabric in between his fingers. Both in this timeline and the original timeline, he’d worn his uniform, his suit, his gear in the apocalypse as various forms of armor to protect himself against the rest of the world. To wear anything else was a luxury reserved for only the times he was certain of his safety and drop his guard.

With that thought, Five made his way to the kitchen, where Ben had just set down a plate of pancakes on the countertop.

At Five’s arrival, Ben paused, his eyes lingering on Five. Five realized belatedly that the shirt he’d borrowed was overly large, one sleeve slipping down to reveal his bare shoulder.

Ben swallowed and Five watched his throat bob. “So full disclosure,” Ben said abruptly, breaking the silence that stretched between them. “I’m going to have to make things more awkward, if that’s even possible, by coming clean and admitting my body might, uh, still be wired to respond to you. Even if my mind’s been brought up to speed and recognizes the situation we’re in.” He nibbled on his bottom lip. “I don’t want to cause you any problems so I figured honesty was the best way to go about this.”

“No, I’m in the exact boat as you are.” Five said, and made a deliberate show of shifting his gaze from Ben’s lips to Ben’s eyes. “Albeit a boat with its steering wheel snapped clean off and the two of us on board with absolutely no say on what direction it’s heading next. And also a boat that happens to be persistently haunted by the ghost of Freud.”

They looked at each other for a moment before Ben let out a snort of laughter.

“You’re ridiculous, you know that, Five?” Ben said, words warm with affection, and Five felt his lips curve up in response.

Ben slid a plate over to Five and the both of them sat in a comfortable silence as they ate. Ben’s cooking tasted nostalgic; he’d somehow managed to make his pancakes exactly the way Grace did, sweet and fluffy.

Then, Five paused, lowering his fork to look at Ben. “You can cook. And you do it well.”

Ben arched an eyebrow at him. “Yeah? Is that a surprise?”

“Yes, in the sense that most of us couldn’t cook in our original timeline. You passed before you had the chance to live independently from the Umbrella Academy. I spent the majority of my lifetime scavenging for edible things to eat in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.” Five began ticking a list off his fingers. “Luther ate astronaut food while he was on the moon and Allison had her own private chef. I’ve literally seen Klaus fishing donuts out of the dumpster and Diego cracking raw eggs into his mouth. So that leaves Vanya as the only competent cook among us, and I bet she ordered takeout most of the time.”

“Yeah, I can confirm that rooting around dumpsters for the next meal are par for course for Klaus. But I have the feeling that in this timeline, everyone might be more …” Ben’s mouth twisted. “Well-adjusted, without their abilities and without having been raised by Sir.”

“Well-adjusted,” Five repeated, and the phrase tasted alien in his mouth. “Us, well-adjusted. Can you imagine?”

“Or at least, as well-adjusted as we can get as former members of the Umbrella Academy. There’s a reason I thought my calling was to open a horror and sci-fi bookshop, and named my cat after a tentacle alien.”

Five drummed his fingers against the countertop. “Yes, it’ll be interesting to see how the others turned out.”

“So you are planning on finding the others.” Ben’s voice was deceptively light but Five could sense the weight of his gaze.

“Yes,” Five said, and knew it to be true, that there was no way he could settle for living as John Baxter the Fifth when he had unfinished business as Five. He’d ripped apart the space-time continuum to be reunited with his family; he had a responsibility now to bring everyone together since he was the one who scattered them in this timeline in the first place. “They’ll probably hate me for turning their lives upside down and making them remember. But I’ve been employed as a professional life-ruiner for decades now so nothing’s changed, really.”

“You haven’t ruined my life,” Ben said, voice firm. “And I’ll help in any way I can. I want to be able to talk to everyone.”

Five took in the determination etched into Ben’s features. Out of the seven of them, it was Ben who understood best what it meant to be a man out of time, to have roamed through time without contact with the rest of the world. And it was Ben who understood best the all-consuming drive to take back the lives they were meant to have but never had the chance to experience.

“Then it’s a plan,” Five said. He clasped Ben’s hand, warm and steadfast in his.

__________________________________

With the intent of committing all his time and energy into locating the others, Five had resolved to submit a request for two weeks of vacation time. What he hadn’t expected was for his supervisor to gleefully summon the entire department to listen in on the call as soon as he crisply informed her that he would be taking off from work. There was a flurry of voices ( “Oh my god, he’s actually going on vacation, the world’s going to end anytime now.” “C’mon, give the guy a break here. What’s the big deal?” “No, you don’t get it; he’s been working here for five years now and he hasn’t missed a single day. Like, to the point he’s got so much vacation time saved up it’s becoming a problem”) before Kat’s bemused voice came onto the line. “Request approved, Baxter, God knows you could use a vacation. We’ll mark it into our calendars and make it official so you can’t back out of your free time even if you tried.”

Five rolled his eyes and hung up while Ben in the passenger seat looked amused. “So the world’s going to end now that you’re on vacation,” Ben repeated. “Oh, if only they knew.”

“Don’t talk to me until you buckle your seatbelt, Benjamin,” Five snipped back. “Believe it or not, you’re going to have to follow the rules of safety like the rest of us mortals.”

“Yes, mother dearest,” Ben replied, shooting Five an affectionate look.

Five’s mouth twitched, as he turned the key and started the engine. It had been a while since he’d given someone a ride - and even longer since he’d spoken so freely with a passenger in the car.

All in all, it took an hour to locate Klaus. Ten minutes of Googling for a Klaus in the area, another twenty minutes of pulling up a profile of a “Klaus Vogel” on the website of a tattoo parlor and scrolling through a portfolio of colorful psychedelic tattoos that could only have been produced by the mind of their brother, and a half hour to drive to said tattoo parlor and come up with a cover story to justify why they were tracking him down.

But as they got out of the car and stared up at the glowing neon storefront, Ben stopped in his tracks.

Five turned to look at him. “You’re not going to go in?”

“Fourteen years,” Ben said. “I’ve spent fourteen years watching Klaus’s life go down the drain and not being able to do a single goddamn thing about it.” By his side, his hands curled into fists. “I don’t know what I’d do if I went in there and found out he’d fucked up his life after being given a second chance. Punch his lights out, I guess. So it might be a good idea for me to hang back and watch for a bit before coming in.”

There was a clear view of the brightly lit interior from the glass windows, at least, which meant that Ben could still watch. “Fine by me. If you see him smashing a snow globe over his head, though, that’s your cue to come in as back-up.”

That drew a small smile from Ben, who stepped aside to let Five through.

The shop was empty when he entered. Auspicious timing on their part, seeing as no one else would come in for a tattoo at 2 PM on a Monday afternoon.

Five let his gaze sweep across the space, taking in the soaring industrial rafters above, the array of framed art on the brick walls, and rows of shiny black chairs, before he made eye contact with the person at the front counter.

He stared at his brother.

Klaus gleamed, his piercings glinting under the fluorescent lights of the parlor. Five counted a nose ring, an eyebrow piercing, and a cluster of cartilage piercings before his gaze finally caught on the holes in Klaus’s earlobes.

Jesus Christ, Klaus had gauges.

And tattoos. But different from the ones he’d had in their original timeline; in a red halter top, Klaus had enough skin to reveal vibrant swirls of ink cascading down his shoulders and collarbone.

“My eyes are up here, darling,” Klaus said, and winked at Five. “I’m flattered, of course, but I’m sure you didn’t come here just to admire me. How can I help you today?”

Of course Klaus would have the ability to catch him completely off guard, no matter what universe they’d both ended up in. Five shoved his hands into his pockets. “No, I -- I came here to ask for you specifically. You’re Klaus, right? I saw your portfolio and was interested in the kind of work you do.” On the drive over, he and Ben agreed that under the assumption that Klaus didn’t remember, it would be best to approach him under the pretense of asking for consultation on a tattoo design.

Klaus beamed. “Aw, so you really did come looking for little old me. Did you call in to make an appointment beforehand?”

“Not quite. I was actually looking for a quote on a tattoo idea I had. Could I draw it for you?”

“Sure thing you can. Just so you know, state law says you have to be 18 or older to be tatted.” Klaus paused. “You are at least 18, right?”

He dimpled as Five very frostily replied, “I’m 25 and a certified bar association lawyer. I know the law extremely well, thank you very much. ” He took the pen and pad of paper that Klaus passed to him, and took a few seconds to sketch out the design on the front page.

When he finished, he slid the pad over and watched carefully for his brother’s reaction as Klaus looked down at the drawing of a black umbrella with a circle drawn around it.

“Oh. That’s. That’s unique,” Klaus said. “You know, each customer always has a story for each tattoo. Is yours a reference to something?”

The thing about Klaus was that he managed to both be excellent at hiding the truth and terrible at lying. As if his ability enabled him to blend in with his ghosts, he could slip under the radar and vanish into the shadows, like how he had kept the secret of where his training sessions with Sir took place from the rest of them for years. But as soon as someone picked up on the telltale clues - Allison’s skirts disappearing from her closet, cigarette butts left on the windowsills of the mansion - and confronted him, Klaus folded like a house of cards.

So Five took note of Klaus’s paling complexion and grip on the pad of paper, tight enough to wrinkle the pages, and knew with absolute certainty that Klaus somehow remembered everything.

”Yes, it’s a reference to something,” he said. “But it’s not the first time you’ve seen that image. And it’s not the first time you’ve met me, either.”

Klaus put down the pad of paper and smoothed down the pages. He wasn’t meeting Five’s eyes. ”I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

For the first time in his life, Five was coming out of an interaction with Klaus looking like the less sane person. That simply wouldn’t do. He leaned in and smiled widely. “But you do remember everything, don’t you? Because I remember. And I came back for you.” At this proximity, Five could see Klaus’s tattoos more clearly. And there, on Klaus’s collarbone, lay the damning proof: dog tags inked onto skin. Five reached out to touch the tattoo and felt Klaus freeze. “When you came back home after time traveling, you had dog tags. But when I transported you away from the apocalypse and into this timeline, you must have lost them. But you couldn’t let go of the memories, could you now?”

“All right, all right, I give,” Klaus said loudly. “Jesus, Five, you never know when to back off, do you?” But as resigned as his tone was, his expression was fond.

Five hooked a finger around Klaus’s nose ring and tugged. “Only because you were just as stubborn in maintaining that sham facade of yours.” He let go when Klaus swatted at him. “For the record, though, I’m sorry. That you ended up losing your dog tags with the time jump. I made a number of mistakes in taking you all with me into this new timeline and I intend to pay for each one of them.”

“Well, if you fucked up, you must’ve fucked up so tremendously that everything ended up working out. For one, since I’m no longer blessed with the gift of seeing ghosts screaming bloody hell at me from every corner I turn, I’m clean this time around.” Klaus saw the look on Five’s face and smiled. “Yeah, crazy, right? I found my release through art. I got into art school, got a job as a tattoo artist afterwards, been working here for the past five years, the whole shebang.”

Five had to swallow before clapping a hand to Klaus’s shoulder. “That’s ... that's great to hear. Good for you.” Then he thought back to why Ben had refused to come into the tattoo parlor in the first place and whipped around to see Ben still standing there at the store window, arms crossed and brow furrowed with anxiety.

Five exchanged looks with him before Ben nodded and ducked out of view.

Klaus, who had missed the whole interaction, tilted his head. “Whatcha looking at, Five?”

“Nothing, just --"

And then the door swung open and Ben stepped inside. Klaus fell silent.

“What? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Ben said, and smiled wryly.

“Ben, you little shit,” Klaus breathed reverently.

Then the two of them were moving, Klaus scrambling from behind the counter to meet Ben’s strides halfway, colliding into each other with enough force to nearly topple over.

They looked good. Happy.

Five should’ve looked away from such an intimate moment. He should’ve looked away, but he didn’t. So he watched as Klaus wrapped his arms around Ben and Ben buried his face in Klaus’s shoulder, as Klaus pressed kisses to Ben’s face and Ben laughed. They stayed like that for a while, faces tilted towards one another, speaking to each other in low voices that Five couldn’t make out.

When they separated, Klaus looked at Five and raised an eyebrow. “Jealous?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Five replied stiffly before Klaus reeled him in and pressed a wet smacking kiss to his forehead.

“Gross,” Five grumbled, but from the corner of his eye, he could see Ben grinning. The tight feeling in his chest eased.

“So now that I’ve reunited with two of my long lost brothers, it looks like I definitely won’t be working today,” Klaus said. “Give me a sec to talk to my coworkers, I’ll be back soon.” Five and Ben watched as he made his way towards the back room and poked his head inside to chat.

“He has coworkers,” Ben said. “And he’s clean and he’s doing what he loves and he -- ” Ben’s voice cracks. “He’s happy.”

“You should have come in with me after all,” Five replied. He kept his gaze locked on Klaus as Ben swiped at his eyes.

“Well, now that we’ve found him, we’ll have more than enough time to catch up in the future.”

Before Five could parse the concepts of “more than enough time” and “future”, Klaus sauntered back to them.

“We’re all in the clear, I’ve got the day off to follow you around and pester you,” Klaus announced. “So what, the two of you just found each other and have been tracking the rest of us down?”

Five and Ben looked at each other. “It’s .. complicated,” Five said at last. “But yes, if you’re asking, the both of us only remembered everything recently. You, on the other hand, seemed to have recovered your memories for quite a while.”

“Yeah, if you count ‘two years’ as ‘quite as while’.The moment you zapped us out of the apocalypse came back to me in a dream and since then, I’ve been piecing things together.”

“And you didn’t try to find us?” Ben asked.

Klaus was quiet for a moment. “Dave wasn’t here. In this world, I mean. I went through all kinds of records from the 50s and 60s, but I couldn’t find anything. He just … doesn’t exist. Neither does dear old Dad, by the way, I checked.” He rubbed his collarbone, thumb brushing against the tattooed dog tags. “So you have to understand, I didn’t want to give myself false hope and look all of you up, only to find that none of you had made it and that I’d have to live in this new world alone. Better to go back to the life I have now. Besides, if I try hard enough, I can sometimes brush off all the memories as just a really bad acid trip.”

“We’re here now,” Ben said quietly. “This is real. You’re not alone anymore.”

“Yeah. Isn’t that something?” Klaus replied, voice full of wonder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the hanged man - a martyr, made tranquil and tragic in facing its loss. in letting go of its past life, it gains meaning and freedom.
> 
> the fool - a being of promise, reborn in the light of new beginnings. a soul both young and old, it wields a timeless wisdom.

**Author's Note:**

> the hermit - a creature of solitude, reliant upon its own instincts to move through the world. a perfectionist bearing the weight of its awareness. 
> 
> the hanged man - a martyr, made tranquil and tragic in facing its loss. in letting go of its past life, it gains meaning and freedom.


End file.
